A/N: Sorry for the wait. I took a deviation down Lemon Lane. It was a terrible task to rightfully return… to this fic. Damn. There goes my alliteration spree. Nah, I was also very, very sick for several days, and it shows I think. My brain's not back up to full capacity yet.
::sigh:: The more characters appear, the harder it is to write! To keep all of them straight, and give them screen time in a believable way… sorry Shampoo fans, she's kind of being left in the dust. I really wanted to have random Mousse moments though, so I couldn't leave her at home.
BTW, for (nobody) who asked, this is not going to be a drawn out fic. Definitely less than 10 chapters… maybe only about 7 or so. Don't worry, the pain won't last. Chin up, stay strong and you'll survive to the end.
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Chapter Four: Origins and Culture. The Teachers Appear!
"Martial Arts Salsa Dancing? Why the hell did you accept such a challenge?" Ryoga had finally put in a much belated appearance later in the evening. Somehow, he'd ended up on the roof of the hotel, though he was almost positive that he'd never walked through the building. At any rate, Ranma had found him there when he sought a really high place to perch and sulk while contemplating the demise of his enemies.
There had been the traditional attack, with a battle-death cry to start. Ranma had gotten to vent some frustrations, and so had Ryoga. After all, being really, really lost during summer vacation is almost as bad as somehow getting roped into Martial Arts Salsa Dancing competitions during summer vacation.
Ranma was currently sprawled out on the roof tiles in a manner that just begged to have him pushed right over the edge. Luckily Ryoga was a little too far away to give in to such temptation. "Aw c'mon. It's dancing. How hard can it be? I mean, you just shake your groove thang or whatever…"
Ryoga gave him a disbelieving stare, but Ranma was used to those. "It's salsa dancing. Salsa."
"Aaaand…?"
"Do you even know what salsa dancing is?"
"Of course I do!" Ranma was immediately on his feet, fist raised. They had been having an almost normal conversation for all of two minutes, and so a fight had to be instigated before they could continue. Besides, everyone knew salsa was a kind of food. Duh. How this was tied into dancing he wasn't sure, but if there was food involved there was no way he was going to lose. Unless they made him cook it. But this was supposed to be a dance competition, right?
"Here you are!" Akane's voice broke into his thought patterns rudely, "And Ryoga! When did you get here?"
"Um, just a little while ago…" Ryoga was instantly stuttering and quivering, one finger inching downward to punch some nice holes in the tile roof. Ranma grumbled to himself and sat back down. And he'd been so looking forward to destroying something too. Girls had an uncanny ability to show up when he felt like doing property damage though – maybe it was some kind of psychic phenomenon.
"Well, it's nice to see you again." Akane finished climbing up and sat down next to the lost boy. Ranma idly wondered if the hotel would make them pay to fix the leaky roof later. Well, hopefully it just wouldn't rain while they were there. Akane continued adding to Ryoga's distress. "You've been gone for weeks this time! Were you off on vacation somewhere?"
"S-sort of, I guess…"
"Jeez Akane, can't you tell he just got lost again? He's probably been in the Tokyo subway system for the last week and a half." This was actually a generous estimate. Subway tunnels were naturally treacherous places to be, from Ranma's experience, so he had no doubt that someone like Ryoga would have no problem being lost down there for months on end.
"Shut up Ranma, you insensitive jerk! And after I came up here to check on you too!"
"Check on me? Feh. Why'd you do that?"
"Because you took on another martial arts challenge, and you don't know anything about it! Don't you get tired of making a fool out of yourself every week?"
"Hah! Like I was tellin' Pig-Boy here, there's no way I'm gonna lose some sissy dance competition!" Wait a minute. Ranma paused at the completion of his own statement, his tongue giving voice to a concept that hadn't actually occurred to his brain. If it was a 'sissy dance competition', and he was participating, did that make him…?
Akane ignored his introverted wrath, instead getting around to the topic that Ranma had been trying to find a way to bring up himself.
"Ryoga, do you know anything about Salsa dancing? Not that I care about this perverted idiot, but they way that guy danced was awfully graceful. And he looked really cool while he was walking away." Ranma twitched in the background. Damn that guy's coolness, damn it to hell!
"A-actually, I do. Martial Arts Salsa Dancing is kind of a specialized style, but I've dabbled a bit…"
"Dabbled?"
"Shut up Ranma!"
"Really, Ryoga?" Akane grabbed one of Ryoga's hands with her own. Probably not a good move, since Ranma was pretty sure the hotel would notice fist sized holes in the roof if nothing else. Briefly, the contemplated moving to the security of another building, just in case this one chose to collapse. It had been through a lot of stress lately. "Do you think you might be able to teach me a little bit of it? I've always wanted to know how to dance, and with it being a martial art too…"
"You, dance? No way." Ranma didn't get to continue this thought for long, since he abruptly found himself on one of the neighboring buildings anyway, courtesy of yet another Akane Power Punch. He still managed to catch the last few bits of the 'conversation' between the two remaining on the hotel rooftop though.
"So, would you be willing to teach me, just a little bit?"
"O-of course! I would be honored!"
"Thank you, Ryoga!" She paused for a moment and glanced towards Ranma, who stuck his tongue out at her from the safety of his rooftop crater. "And maybe you can help out that macho moron, so that he doesn't insult the name of Anything Goes School any more than he already does just by existing."
"For your sake, I shall try, Akane!" Ryoga probably would have agreed that the sky was, in fact, orange and that the moon was really the third Deathstar at that point, because Akane was still holding his hand.
"You're such a good friend, Ryoga… too bad some people don't appreciate that." She rose to her feet, straightening her dress a little before starting to step away. "I'm going to go and change into something a little more comfortable for dancing and training... I'll see you in just a bit, okay?"
"O-okay!"
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And so, they retired to one of the garden areas behind the hotel, mostly because that was where Ryoga found himself after jumping off of the roof .There was no need to make things more complicated by actually trying to find a place with a dance floor, after all. Ranma was flopped out on his back on a wooden veranda, clearing his mind before beginning his Martial Arts Salsa Dancing training. It just wouldn't do to carry around extra things like thoughts when in the midst of intense physical activity. That being the case, he should ask the one question that was actually knocking around in this brain, just to get it out of the way. "Hey Ryoga."
"What?" The eternally lost one was stretching out a little ways off.
"How is it that you know all these weird martial arts? I mean you're pretty much an expert at Rhythmic Gymnastics and stuff too."
Ryoga paused for a moment before continuing to warm up. "None of your business."
"Oh ho." Ranma tilted his head to one side and grinned at his 'friend'. "Maybe there's something more behind this? Maybe you like learning all this freaky stuff? Or maybe…." he paused for a moment as a really strange idea occurred to him, "What style of martial arts do you practice anyway?"
"It's… a unique form."
"Reeealy? Are you sure you don't make up all these funky kinds, teach them to people, leave for a few years and come back to see if they're still practicing them?"
Maybe it was his imagination, but Ryoga twitched pretty badly with that supposition. "No way. That's ridiculous."
"You certainly have enough time on your hands…" It was terribly suspicious, but Ranma didn't really want to think that his guess just now had been right. That would be just way, way too strange even for Ryoga. But maybe it was a family tradition? He abruptly started wondering what the origins were behind Okonomiyaki-do…
"I have hobbies. Lots of them." Ryoga muttered, not bothering to turn and face him.
"Like Rhythmic Gymnastics and Salsa Dancing?"
"Shut up!"
The argument – and ensuing property damage – was cut short once again by female interruption. They were all conspiring to keep him from breaking things today, Ranma decided as Ukyo approached.
"Ranma Honey! Here you are."
"Yo Ucchan. What's up?"
"I'm here to help you out, of course!"
"Huh?" That was unexpected. Perhaps it shouldn't have been, but it was.
"With the Martial Arts Salsa Dancing! You don't know anything about it, do you? Don't worry, I'll partner up with out and we'll win that competition hands down!"
"Partner…?"
"Salsa is a couples dance! You have to have two people, a male-female pair." She informed him, looking kind of disturbingly gleeful to break the news to him. "You didn't know that?"
Ryoga cast a glance over his shoulder while Ranma was processing this new complexity. Suddenly, the pigtailed one was foreseeing a lot more pain, anxiety and serious social problems in his future. He was therefore sufficiently distracted that he didn't bother interrupting the following conversation, as strange as that may have been.
Ryoga began, actually taking the initiative to start a discussion in a normal tone of voice. "Oh, Ukyo. Good timing. It's convenient that you're here."
"Ryoga, long time no see! You still owe me money."
"What? No way! You're charging me for that?"
"I am a businesswoman, you know."
"Been taking lessons from Nabiki, I see."
"Be quiet! If she heard you say that… she'd probably charge you for reputation and name usage."
"Good point. Let's move on. I have better things to do than spend my entire evening with Ranma, after all."
She glared at him for that one, but obviously decided it wasn't worth following up on, especially since Ranma was too lost in his own contemplations at the moment to be suitably impressed by her defending his character against such words. She must have elected to be civil instead, which was a much better battle tactic against Ryoga since he never saw it coming. "It's good that you made it here too though. I was worried I wouldn't know enough Martial Arts Salsa Dancing moves to help him out in his fight."
"Waitaminnit! You actually know how to do Martial Arts Salsa Dancing, Ucchan?" Startled out of his tediously slow thought processes, Ranma turned to stare at her in surprise. He'd been thinking she had heard of it somewhere, or that regular salsa dancing was genetically preprogrammed into any female with an ounce of femininity... which explained why Akane couldn't do it.
He was now beginning to wonder if this was something like Martial Arts Calligraphy – where every martial artist since the dawn of time had known how to dance and it was some sort of indication of culture or whatever. If that was so, perhaps a drastic change of life goals was in order? It just wasn't worth it to have to learn things like dancing and writing when all you wanted to do was whup people in fights.
"I sure do! Ryoga taught me a bit a while back."
"He did?" Ranma blinked. That was a strange statement that probably needed some explanation… and why was Ryoga blushing as she told him that? Maybe he still hadn't recovered from her being polite a few moments before? Yes, that seemed likely.
"I don't really remember much of the circumstances, but it was when we won that trip to any hot springs in the world… we even came here, to Atami." Ukyo sat down on the edge of the porch next to Ranma's sprawled form. "I'd pretty much forgotten about it until Kuno's fight earlier."
"Huh. Well, if I gotta have a partner it's best that it's you, Ucchan!" Ranma rolled over and sat up, turning the charm up to High Beams. "After all, if I had to do it with Akane we'd lose for sure. She's got the grace of a hippopotamus, and there's no way she'd be able to dance!"
Ranma was abruptly nailed in the back of the head with a solid oak chest of drawers. It looked pretty expensive, so he knew he'd have to destroy the evidence later.
"Ranma!" Akane was closing in, but Ryoga beat her to the scene.
"How dare you insult Akane in such a way?! Die, you insensitive moron!"
And so, Ranma got to destroy some property after all. It was only a small part of a decorative wall, but he felt much better after tossing Ryoga through the cement and brickwork. Both boys then dusted themselves off and returned to the issue at present, while the girls had procured a pot of tea from somewhere in the interim. Akane had apparently been placated by nailing Ranma with furniture and Ryoga stepping in to beat on him.
"So, both Ryoga and Ukyo know Martial Arts Salsa Dancing…" Apparently Akane had been filled in as to the pertinent information at hand. "I guess we're really lucky for that!"
Ukyo nodded, sipping her drink. "It's not a very well known style, I know. I'm kind of surprised we'd run into it again… but maybe it's just the air here in Atami."
"Actually, the Kinryuou School is located not far from here." Ryoga shared as he and Ranma sat down as well. "The fighters from there are probably scattered all over the surrounding area."
"Are you sure? I mean, their dojo could be located in Hokkaido for all you know, right P-chan?"
"Who's P-chan?!" Ryoga spat reflexively before resuming the conversation. The rest of the party was unfazed, as such things were just plain routine. "Anyway, we might as well get started with the training. We only have a week, right?"
Ranma yawned lazily. After getting a chance to spar with Ryoga, the idea of ending the evening with dancing was looking less and less appealing. Maybe he should just skip out now? It's not like he'd miss anything, since he was sure Nabiki would be selling pictures in the street in a few hours anyway.
His schemes were abruptly truncated by the sensation of something really cold running down through his hair and across his shoulders. Namely, this substance was what is commonly referred to as mizu, aqua, dihydrogen monoxide, et cetera. Water. The person who introduced it to the top of his head was none other than Ryoga, who apparently didn't want to do much salsa dancing that night either. Where he got ice cold water from at such short notice wasn't really an issue, since the stuff just fell from the sky whenever it felt like it, and more often than not on the locations where Jusenkyou cursed people were at.
"What the hell? Ryoga!" Damn. His voice was even embarrassingly squeaky due to both the gender change and temperature shock. Definitely not cool or graceful. He was taking steps backward in his progress.
Ryoga snorted and rose to his feet, shoving the small canteen he'd used to douse Ranma with back into his backpack, which was sitting off to one side. "Come on. We've got a time limit, and salsa dancing is for couples, remember? And I refuse to dance with you as a guy."
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Next Time: Dance Lessons are Never Free! Ryoga's Fierce Training
I know, that's the title I said I was going to use for this chapter… I changed my mind, okay? Sheesh…
A Final Note: No pairings in this fic. Well, maybe a little RanmaxAkane, but only because it's totally canon and you can't have Ranma without it. All these interactions are based on actual character traits of these guys straight from the anime & manga, as I see it. I might hint a little bit towards things (like a RyogaxUkyo pairing) but I will not be contaminating this fic with my own fancies. That's what side stories are for. I'm also not bashing Akane – I like her quite a bit! This story is told from Ranma's point of view however, so we can't expect flattery and praise.
P.S. –There's no real, good translation of 'Ucchan', Ranma's nickname for Ukyo, so I had to use the Japanese version… it sounds better anyway. I wish I didn't have to use 'Ranma Honey', but I have my principles…
P.P.S. -The moon really is the third Deathstar. You thought the Star Wars program disappeared in the 90's? You were WRONG!